How's that? Even if Romney gets Ohio AND Florida, he still comes up short of 270. 253 to be exact. He would still need to pull out all the remaining toss ups or score a pretty big upset in PA (or get both WI & MI).

The math just doesn't add up for Romney. No matter how well he did in the debate.

Posted by swamphawk22 on 10/8/2012 1:09:00 AM (view original):So Derivatives which have been around for hundreds of years and CDS which are very new and an almost unknown entity and which caused the burst of the Real estate bubble to have a far greater impact than normally would have happened, are now something Bush should have magically known about?

And they didnt cause the crash, they just made it worse.

So why didnt the 20 or so Presidents that have been around since Derivitaives started being used ever try to ban them? Answer of course is they are vital to the free market economy.

It is a little technical, but a derivative allows you to secure deals in the future. Say you are going to harvest 100 units of wheat in 3 months and the price today is 10 dollars a unit. I want to make sure I get paid that amount in the future so I can pay my bills, and a grainery wants to make sure they have enough to keep in business so we make a deal that in 3 months when I harvest you will pay me $10 a unit. If it goes up I lose, if it goes down I win, but at least we are both safe.

Without them the free market system we live under collapses.

Some people did twist the system a bit, and this caused problems. All was discovered after the crash.

As for CDS this was a new invention. And like other new inventions sometimes things happen bad. And this is also something we discovered post crash.

On paper derivatives sound great. When your only knowledge of them is by what you read on wikipedia you dont really know what has and did happen to make the 2008 bubble burst harder then it had any right to. And CDSs are somewhat new, but they have been on the market for several years. And here is the truth that you obviously didnt uncover. There was QUADRUPLE in value of CDSs in play when the crash happened then the actual value of the companies being leveraged. QUADRUPLE! if you were to do a smidgen of reading on what CDSs are you would know what I am talking about, so I am not going to spend a half hour typing precisely what I mean in leveraged value. But if that isnt absolutely criminal I dont know what is. And this all happened under the nose of your saviour BUSHY. Now partially here is my point, you like to put all the blame squarely on the shoulders of Obama for the lack of progress in Americas economy, and yet you dont want to but ANY of the blame for Americas great collapse on Bush. WTF? Are you so blind with love for Bush and hate for Obama that you cant be reasonably fair here? I for one dont want to 100% blame either one in their respective parts in this whole shenanigen because I believe that people need to be responsible for their own actions. Including you, me, corporations in general, and the leadership of our respective countries. Presidents and Prime Ministers are supposed to be able to guide countries in a way that doesnt completely destroy their economies, AS WELL as guide the way out of the muck. But there really is only so much that a person can do. And that is all that presidents and PMs are. People. Bush is truly only partly to blame for sleeping on the job, as is Obama. At a certain point we all need to point our fingers at ourselves in addition to the elephant in the room CORPORATIONS after all if it werent for their circumventing rules, and ofcourse lobbying for less strict rules in absolutely everything imaginable there is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that this crash would have been a fraction as hard hitting as its turned out to be.

Swamp, Doug, Baker, Raucus, and the rest of you righties you guys are proud freedom loving Americans that like to think they have something to do with the way their lives are run right? Stop blaming all of your problems on 1 man, start thinking of ways that you can make a difference. Quit yer belly aching! Your better then that arent you?

I'm not blaming my problems, or the country's problems, on one man. He did not cause the economic downturn. However, there is no argument out there that he has helped. His policies have hindered any recovery. Further, it is clear he is in over his head. Which is not surprising to those of us who said time and again that he was not qualified for the job.

There are tons of arguments that the stimulus helped slow the recession and start the turn around.

In early 2009, every indication was that the economy was headed over the edge of a cliff. But at the last second, the country swerved away from the edge and started heading back in the right direction.

Now maybe it was just pure coincidence that the turnaround began at almost the exact same moment that the stimulus started. It could be possible that that the economy began to grow again, job losses began to slow and layoffs started coming back down to earth all at nearly the same time -- right after the president signed the Recovery Act -- and it had nothing at all to do with the stimulus.

Posted by swamphawk22 on 10/10/2012 7:43:00 PM (view original):There is always the double talk among Obama supporters that they believe that the stimulus worked, but can never really explain how.

It didnt work.

The handful of jobs it created didnt change the economy and the nearly Trillion dollars it sucked out of the economy stagnated the natural recovery.

You are simply wrong Swamp. The problem with the stimulus was that it was not big enough. At least it prevented an even larger disaster. But nuance and complexity are lost on you. I am sure you believe, as does Romney, that the economy would have been much better off for example, by letting the auto industry go under. Even though there was no private $$ available at the time to buy the time for restructuring.

So the bailout helped America, but it was not done to your satisfaction. But it's still a plus. And Romney would not have done the bailout at all. So I think it is safe to say that course of action results in a minus. And you support Romney why? Freedom? His "clear" foreign policy? His constantly changing position on abortion? Because American's always step up? (Unless you are Romney during Vietnam, or his 5 sons who "serve" America by working on dad's campaign).

How about his clearly stated budget and tax proposals? What loopholes and exemptions will he eliminate? What programs will he cut so the military can get more money than they are asking for and still cut the deficit? Is it because of these clearly stated ideas and plans that you think Willard Mitt Romney is the man for the job?